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Muddled and Maddening

By

Jagdish Bhagwati

Updated Sept. 13, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET

Now that his handlers want John Kerry to change weapons, in the midst of a presidential duel, from Iraq to the economic rapier, it's safe to say that they think this sets him up to inflict a fatal wound. That may well be so. Yet on trade policy, on which Howard Dean cut his teeth without gaining a cutting edge and Dick Gephardt made his last stand, one can only gasp at Sen. Kerry's gaffes.

How does one forgive him his pronouncements on outsourcing, and his strange silences on the Doha Round of multilateral trade...